Maendre's Mystic Voyage

As the ship landed, Maendre heard a thrumming sound from the hull. The ship was alive.

"Contact with the planetary surface established." the AI said, almost too loudly. It had been over a thousand years since he'd last visited this world, and he hadn't liked it much then. "Time on planet 11894 is currently 2152 hours local time."

Maendre let out a sigh and stood up, letting his artificial legs hold his weight. He stepped down the ramp behind the Captain's seat, which was empty now that they were no longer in FTL travel. As he walked past it, he patted the top of the chair thoughtfully.

"Computer," he said. "What is the current situation with the captain?"

"Captain Viggo Ayvarsdottir has been unreachable for over fifty years," replied the ship's AI. "It is assumed that she is dead." His feet hit the dirt, and he was once again on another world, wondering if things had changed since he had last seen them. He looked up at the strange sky of this world.

"Is there any particular reason for your visit to this planet?" The AI asked, as it always did when landing on a new world.

"I'm here to see what has changed since I was last here," Maendre said, walking off towards a grove of trees nearby. There were no people in sight yet, but there would be soon enough. How long could people stand not talking? On some worlds they couldn't wait to get to it. On others they seemed to avoid it like a plague, sometimes literally.

"No change," he muttered to himself as he approached the grove of trees in front of him. They looked just as strange as they had before - all thin stalks with broad leaves that looked like hands reaching up towards the sky above him. He walked between them into their cool shade and sat down on one of their roots, leaning back against one of the trunks and closing his eyes behind his sunglasses as he let out another sigh and rubbed his temples where grey hair still grew sparsely despite his great age.

The sun overhead was bright even through his eyes closed behind dark glasses; why did every world need to have such an intense sun? How could anyone live without shelter from something like that? But these people didn't seem to mind at all - few of them wore hats or even shades of any sort. Strange creatures these humans were - so different from world to world... but so similar everywhere else that sometimes Maendre wasn't sure what made them human at all except for their general shape and size and ability to interact with each other in a way that resembled dialogue more than monologue or soliloquy or whatever other playwright's word for a single person talking alone on stage was...

He heard footsteps approaching him through the soft grass ahead, rustling softly as feet pushed through it and disrupted its surface tension briefly - though mostly only causing ripples here and there while most of it remained undisturbed by footsteps moving through it at all. It occurred to Maendre that perhaps these creatures called plants their relatives instead of animals because they were wrong about both: both were alive, but neither was sentient at all... especially not these trees...